…some people are calling it “worse than SOPA,” and it’s sponsored by a congressman who thinks the death penalty should be considered for Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking military information to Wikileaks. Be worried: they think we stopped paying attention after SOPA — so they made…the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (PDF) (aka H.R. 3523)…[which] has the support of companies such as AT&T, Facebook, IBM, Intel, Microsoft…and many more. A full list of all 28 corporate supporters is here. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), is also trying to get tech press to tell you…CISPA is “nothing like SOPA.” Don’t believe it. CISPA’s primary function is to remove legal barriers that might keep Internet companies from giving all your communication and information to the government. It allows “cyber entities” (such as Internet service providers, social networks like Facebook and cell phone companies like AT&T) to circumvent Internet privacy laws when they’re pressured by Homeland Security to hand over or shut down — well, almost anything of yours online that the government wants, no warrant needed…

Here’s a handy graphic (click to enlarge) you can download or link and spread everywhere, and here’s a very comprehensive “tool kit” from Anonymous. Don’t ignore this, y’all; the fascists figured out they needed to give more to the big tech companies, so this time we have to defeat it without corporate support.

Adult performer Sledge Hammer…[whose legal name was Marland Anderson, died on April 13th] after…police…shot [him numerous times] with a Taser…Anderson…“had a mild form of schizophrenia, and it wasn’t a problem until he started smoking pot and taking various things for depression,” [friend and film director Stoney] Curtis explained…On Sunday night…Anderson suffered a severe anxiety attack and his girlfriend, adult performer Alexa Cruz, called 911 to prevent him from harming himself…police showed up with an ambulance and…“instead of trying to talk to him or grab him and get him to the ground, or the paramedics giving him a sedative, they decided to break out their tasers and just tasered him excessively until the point where he went into cardiac arrest,” Curtis said…

This article about a Scottish escort service owner convicted of “human trafficking” is a perfect illustration of how the warped minds of police, prosecutors and prohibitionists project crime and evil into everything they see, and how they and their media lackeys use dysphemisms, distortion and exaggeration to create monsters out of businesspeople:

Scotland’s first convicted sex trafficker…revealed the secrets of the seedy vice empire that raked in a fortune – before landing him in jail. Stephen Craig…described how he and…Sarah Beukan…ran their infamous Scottish Elite Escorts and recruited girls to join their prostitution ring. Craig also claimed that footballers, actors and comedians were among the biggest clients…and…admitted taking a third of the money paid by punters to his girls…Craig denied making threats to girls or forcing them to sell their bodies…a police officer claimed one witness said Craig threatened to pour boiling water down her throat…But Sheriff Sam Clark said there was “no pressure, force or threat” on women who worked for him. Craig now faces a proceeds of crime investigation. He said…“Police say Sarah and I made £20,000 a week…[but actually] we probably split about £5000 on a good week”…

“Seedy vice empire”. “Infamous”. “Prostitution ring”. “Sell their bodies”. “Taking money” to mean “charging fees”. The lurid accusations totally unsupported by fact, and the wild exaggeration of his income so the cops can steal more of his property and savings. I wish there were some way to make these asses fully cognizant of how ridiculous they’re going to look once Western society fully awakens from “sex trafficking” hysteria.

Remember the Texas strip club which cops were trying to destroy via harassment of dancers and customers? Apparently, they either succeeded in driving the owner over the edge or else just decided to get rid of him by the time-honored method of framing:

Ryan Walker Grant, co-owner of Flashdancer topless club in Arlington, was arrested after an FBI investigation revealed he tried to hire Mexican hitmen to kill two Arlington city officials whom he blamed for the closure of his business…Grant [allegedly told the FBI plant that]…he stood to lose $800,000 a year if Flashdancers closed for good…

A counselor at a new…shelter for prostituted children groped and propositioned a girl there…prosecutors in Seattle contend Ralph Nathaniel Wells accosted the then-16-year-old girl in late January. Wells, 32, had been employed by the shelter as an overnight counselor…the girl said Wells called her out of her room several times…[and] made inappropriate comments and sexual advances, pulled on her clothing and touched her. Wells was suspended without pay immediately…

Obviously Wells bought his own organization’s propaganda that the girl was “prostituted” (i.e. a passive object without volition) and a “child”, and therefore too stupid and helpless to turn him down and report his sleazy behavior.

I got two new presents this week! On Monday I received a copy of Never On Sunday from Martin English, and on Tuesday a new book named The Origins of Sex from another reader who prefers to remain anonymous. Thank you both so very much!

You don’t have to be a Catholic nun to do outreach to streetwalkers; Cyndee Clay is a lapsed Mormon who heads Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS) in Washington, DC. In this interview with Metro Weekly she talks about sex work stigma, “prostitution-free zones”, police harassment, harm reduction and the services HIPS provides, including “…weekly support groups…daily maintenance groups for active drug users…case management, linkage to care and services, including HIV testing and drop-in syringe access…our bad-date sheet” and condom distribution.

Well, the story’s beginning to make a lot more sense now; it turns out the argument wasn’t over $47 as initially reported, but rather $770 (the difference between the $800 fee Agent Asshole agreed to and the $30 he tried to give her instead). Some of the agents are now making the sophomoric claim that they didn’t know their dates were whores, which is not only unbelievable to anyone in the know, but also flies in the face of reports that they met the women in a brothel. And Dania (the lady who was cheated) insists that contrary to what the bouncer and cops claim, the agents were very discreet and she had no idea they were Secret Service.

A proposal before the Senate…[eliminates] criminal penalties for owners of brothels. The legal experts…want to end what they call the moral “cynicism” of the current legislation. In practice, they say, the ban on brothels only serves to corrupt police who extort money and services from the owners of the establishments…Prostitution itself is not illegal in Brazil, nor is it regulated by the government…the change will…permit labor unions to establish a link between the employees and the employer as is the norm in countries such as Germany and Holland. ”It is a historical claim to the movement for prostitutes,” [said] Roberto Dominguez…legal advisor to the Brazilian Network of Prostitutes…

Metaupdates

In their quest for absolute power over the lives of their subjects, politicians can’t let little things like justice, decency or the law stop them. After a federal judge overturned a Louisiana law banning victims of the “sex offender” registry from social media, tyrants in New York realized the same thing would probably happen if they enacted a similar law, so they used political pressure to force online companies to do their dirty work for them:

Back in 2008, New York passed a law requiring…sex offenders to register all email addresses and social network accounts with the government…[now] Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has announced the first wave of an initiative called “Operation: Game Over”…[in which] over 3500 sex offenders’ online gaming accounts with companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Blizzard have been banned completely. AG Schneiderman applauds the effort with “We must ensure online video game systems do not become a digital playground for dangerous predators. That means doing everything possible to block sex offenders from using gaming networks as a vehicle to prey on underage victims”…[But as] the New York Civil Liberties Union [points out]…“the problem…is almost non-existent. Children are almost always abused by people they know – a friend or family member – not by people they interact with while playing video games online.”

…Not only are these people blocked from playing with children through these services, they are also blocked from playing with friends and family members. We are further eroding the ability for these people to reintegrate themselves with society, and for what? While New York and those gaming companies that partnered with the state continue the witch hunt, they will surely earn some brownie points with parents. After all, that is really what matters in an election year…Who cares if justice is actually being served? Sex offenders are expendable. They aren’t real people. At least you can keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep at night.

25 Responses

To me, one of the weirdest opinions on the Colombian incident is this one below:

“That this happened, I believe, is a result of, and will add to, the image of overly sexualized Latin American women. The reputation Colombia has for “its women” is notorious and stereotypically sexist….

The reaction was more along the lines of “boys will be boys” and “prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, get over it” (a favorite triteness of Colombians, via our Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel García Márquez). And some American commenters, it seems, actually agree.

“Odd” in the sense of “freakish” but not in the sense of “uncommon”, I’m afraid; it derives straight from “social construction of gender“, which teaches that humans have no natural sexual impulses or gender roles, and all that is imposed by the Collective.

How did the police go from “To Protect and Serve” to “Protect themselves from all threats real and imagined, including little children and puppy dogs, using the greatest force they can get away with.”?

The real threat was not that SS agents might hire prostitutes, but that one of them was so completely unprincipled and immoral as to cheat a businesswoman out of her fee. Who knows if he was the only one? In the US, where they have more authority, they might be getting away with it all the time. These are the people you are trusting to protect the President and other VIPs?

Brothels should be governed by the same laws that apply to hotels and spas.

Two things: The Drug War and police unions. The former put them in the position of masters rather than servants and dramaticallyincreased corruption, and the latter made it impossible to even dismiss them for brutality, much less try them. Fixing American police would require several steps: 1) Make all laws against private consensual behavior unconstitutional. 2) Dissolve all public-sector unions; public employees are a kind of minor official, not laborers. 3) Subject police to the UCMJ, since they think they’re military anyhow. Those three steps would be a good start.

Just cut the budget. Eliminate SWAT and plain clothes operations. People will be safer and the taxpayers will save money. Towns working through budget calamities might fall into this by accident and benefit from it.

I’m not jumping to conclusions since we’ve only heard about a thousand versions of this story and we haven’t heard (at all) the story of the agent that supposedly “cheated” the lady out of her fee.

$800 in Columbia is excessive, that’s for sure. Additionally, maybe I missed it – but I didn’t see where she stated she wanted $800 BEFORE he took her anywhere. I see where she said she wanted a “gift”. I don’t think Maggie ever did any business without getting the money up front – so I think she was playing with fire there in going to a room with a drunk gringo without getting the chickens up front but …

I mean – whatever. If it had been me (well, this wouldn’t have been me because I plan these things out to a tee and don’t just go out drinking and decide to pick up a hooker) … but if it had been me in an alternate universe where “me” was dropped on his head as a baby I may have been terribly surprised in the morning when she asked for $800 but I would have moved the white-hot gates of hell with my bare dick-skinners to get her every penny of that money so she’d keep her mouth shut.

Actually, this DID happen to me – in the Philippines once. I met a nice hooker in a “brothel” bar and she asked me where my hotel room was. I told her – and she told me to go back to the room and wait until she got off her shift – that way I didn’t have to pay the “barfine”.

And sure enough – she came knocking on my door at around midnight and … well that lady just TORE ME UP all night and I didn’t get any sleep.

Got up to go into work – she leans out from under the covers and says … “Hey baby, where’s my money?”

Oh shit.

“Uhm, baby – how much … uhm … money do you … uhm … want?”

And I was prepared to hear the worst.

She said … “Twenty Dollars”.

Whew!! $20!!

I told her … “Oh baby, you were worth MORE than $20!” So I gave her a big tip too – because she had done a lot more than $20 and frankly, I was just thankful she wasn’t trying to rip me off!

I can’t figure out why she didn’t ask for the money up front, unless Colombian men are such perfect gentlemen it never seemed necessary to her…which seems absurd. I was only directly cheated once, and that was a very different situation.

Well, I don’t want to indict her either – there’s just too much crazy info floating around. I actually got told by a well placed sourced that the chick was a transvestite and when the agent figured it out – he refused to pay.

Well – I think that report was wrong now too – the bikini she’s wearing in that pic isn’t big enough for any purple-helmeted soldiers to hide in!

Your source is a twit; I honestly have no idea how grown men can believe that a man could stay overnight with someone and somehow be fooled regarding her gender. It was just an excuse to (perhaps unconsciously) deny the truth: that the agent was only one step away from being a rapist.

I really don’t think policing, at least as it’s currently organized in the USA, can be fixed.

But here’s an idea I have: Cops claim to be professionals, let’s treat them as such. Other professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, nurses, even hair dressers can be sued personally for their actions, especially if they violate professional standards. Extend that to the cops. Make them carry malpractice insurance.

As much as I hate the idea of more law suits, I suspect that would bring a lot of police excesses to a screeching halt.

Maggie’s idea of subjecting them to the UCMJ is pretty perfect – and would solve all the problems. However, it won’t work unless you (at least administratively) merge the police with the military services and that would make the cops formally military – and, this would probably require a constitutional amendment.

Also – these guys involved in the USSS fiasco were Counter Assault Team (CAT). SOME may have a police officer’s background but many are just former military guys, some veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess, technically, they are “law enforcement” but you’ll never see them come banging on your door or making any arrests.

Their job is to stay out of sight and deliver a VERY BAD DAY to any fool(s) who attempt to harm the President. They are really there – to counteract any large-scale, coordinated attack on the POTUS.

I thought they were the coolest guys in the Secret Service and now that I see they’ve hired several platoons of hookers – I’m convinced I was right about them! 🙂

Cops are the only “professionals” that are held to a lower standard than the layperson. I laugh every time I hear about how much more cops are punished than “civilians;” the evidence points in every direction except that. The only time that happens is they’ve pissed off someone higher up or they’ve become a political liability.

And the supreme court has ruled that a prosecutor, even when he suborns perjury in a death penalty case, still has absolute immunity.

I think the best way to fix this – in addition to Maggie’s suggestions – is to strip immunity from cops and prosecutors and judges – and let any jury in a criminal trial vote to re-convene themselves as a grand jury – and indict anyone in the legal process that they’ve just witnessed, including cops, prosecutor and judge. I mean, if these state actors “haven’t done anything wrong,” then what do they have to fear, right?

I must admit that I found the article about prostitution in Spain to be completely uninformative. Maybe there is a trafficking problem but that article doesn’t make the case. It reminds me of the pro-drug-war articles that consist of anecdotes about junkies and quotes from Drug Warriors. They pull facts completely out of the air (90% of Spanish prostitutes are trafficked; all prostitute in Spain are foreigner (which ipso facto means they are trafficked)). I would love to see a rebuttal piece from someone who actually knows something about the Spanish sex industry.

Despite the UCMJ, you get stuff like Abu Ghraib. It has to be accountability, an end to the idea that “they are fighting bad guys, so they should be immune.” An end to the Dirty Harry idea that we should allow police to do “whatever it takes,” and that they get to decide what it takes, with little or no review. One thing that might help is if people knew what the risks really were — most of us will never be killed or even scratched in a violent crime, and of the few of us who are, it will almost certainly be somebody we know. Or cops.

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